Resisting White Supremacy

"We are working for a day ... when discrimination is wiped out of our laws, habits and hearts"

– from KFTC's Vision Statement

Kentuckians For The Commonwealth has a deep commitment to racial justice. We stand for refugees, immigrants, black lives and others who are oppressed and abused because of race, religion and other identities. At KFTC, we recognize that we are – all of us – bound together. We believe that we can build a bright future together and we are working for a day when "discrimination is wiped out of our laws, habits and heart."

Overcoming racism and halting the spiraling cycle of violence is an immense challenge we all face, a big one that is getting bigger in our current political climate. We are committed to not just react to hate, but to overcome it. At KFTC, we have put together this page of resources as a starting point for those looking for more information or ways to plug into the work of dismantling white supremacy.

Information on white supremacy and white supremacist organizations

"The alternative-right, commonly known as white supremacy, is a set of far-right ideologies, groups and individuals whose core belief is that “white identity” is under attack by multicultural forces using “political correctness” and “social justice” to undermine white people and “their” civilization. Characterized by heavy use of social media and online memes, white supremacyers eschew “establishment” conservatism, skew young, and embrace white ethno-nationalism as a fundamental value."

SPLC categorizes the TWP as a hate group, describing them as, “...a white nationalist group that advocates for racially pure nations and communities and blames Jews for many of the world’s problems. Even as it claims to oppose racism, saying every race deserves its own lands and culture, the group is intimately allied with neo-Nazi and other hardline racist organizations that espouse unvarnished white supremacist views.”

Luke O'brien, an investigative journalist, spent weeks with many on the “alt-right,” including the TWP and Matthew Heimbach. The article includes information about why the TWP is targeting Appalachia: “The Trump campaign has also unwittingly generated valuable intel. Heimbach and Parrott are using a map of Trump strongholds to target areas where white nationalism would play best. “If they’re ready to vote for Trump, they can’t be too far away from being ready to support a real nationalist party,” Heimbach reasoned. The TWP is focused on greater Appalachia and planning to conduct outreach in districts in West Virginia, Kentucky, Indiana, and Tennessee in anticipation of running local candidates in 2018.”

After the events of Charlottesville, Virginia in August 2017, many more rallies and events have been planned. "These events will provide an important barometer for the future of this movement, depending on how many people turn out, who those people are, and how they conduct themselves. For white supremacy, the coming weekend represents a critical test—which may reveal it gathering force, dissipating, or changing in significant ways."

The New York Times video decodes the symbols of hate that white supremacists, Nazis and white supremacy groups display at their marches, including the violent gathering in Charlottesville, Va.

ORGANIZING TOOLS

At KFTC, we believe in the power of community organizing–people working together to achieve common goals. The key to community organizing is building relationships among diverse groups of people and to do that, it takes bringing folks together and having conversations about the issues folks care about and that affect them. This is a long-term approach that will take time but ultimately brings people together.

Talking about these issues can be difficult but it’s also important that we have those conversations in these times of resistance as we do the long-term, anti-racist organizing. We have collected a set of resources that can help you navigate some of these questions and conversations.

No Hate video call recordings

An online video call discussion on anti-racist resistance in Kentucky with Kentuckians For The Commonwealth, Political Research Associates and Rural Organizing Project. This video call recording begins with a discussion from Political Research Associates about the white supremacist groups that were organizing and recruiting in eastern Kentucky in April 2017: who they are, what their tactics are, and how their activities fit into the larger national context. We also hear from organizers with the Rural Organizing Project, who have done organizing against white supremacists in rural Oregon.